The second-most-popular programming language on the Web is Microsoft's .Net, with Sun's Java third. Other scripting languages, now often called dynamic languages because they compile at runtime, come next, such as Perl, Python, and CGI.
Gutmans said he and Zeev Suraski took Personal Home Page, a simple scripting language created by Rasmus Lerdoff, and wrote a new parser for it, producing the 3.0 version of PHP in 1997. It would go on to become a language that was a favorite of Web site application developers. It powers 20 million sites and has a base of more than 5 million developers, according to information on the Zend Web site.
Gutmans has worked closely with Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM to make sure PHP interfaces to their databases and other products. PHP itself is in the hands of large and broadly based open source project at www.php.net. He's a member of the Apache Foundation and sits on the Eclipse open source programmers workbench board of directors.
"PHP development has always been very focused and Web-specific," Gutmans said. It's a language that can be used by both hobbyists and professional developers. Part of Zend's added value to PHP is the Zend Engine, which takes byte code from the PHP parser and runs it as compiled code, in a manner similar to the Java Virtual Machine. Compiled code runs faster than straight scripting language code, which must go through an interpreter at runtime. Scripting languages, including PHP, are able to deal with a wider variety of data types than Java and combine functions involving different types of data more easily than more structured languages.
